Things You Don't Learn From Books
by Cella N
Summary: There were families, and then there were the Fuyumines. NAOTO. MAGATO. FUYUMINE. It all comes down to blood.


**A/N:** To Noa [**fumari**]. I'm still frowning over this one. So sorry.

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** Things You Don't Learn From Books **

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The first book Naoto read was a tattered up book in color, meant for children. She found it in a trash can near the warehouse where she lived under Fuyumine's care. It was about family.

Naoto read it at night, surprising herself when she could actually understand what was written on the pages, feeling a bit cheated by the fact that she had maintained her memory of how to read, but she had to resort to a children's book for explanation of what family was. In the dark of the room, she would trace the letters one by one, before moving to brush her thin fingers over the faces of the mother, and the father. She would mouth the words to herself, words like _love_ and _understanding_, and she would hate the man a few rooms away from hers a little more, for depraving her of all of that.

That book remained in her room, hidden between the bedsprings and the mattress just in case someone found it and used it against her. (Fuyumine had said: _Never show a weakness. Then they won't know where to attack, and you'll find it easier to kill._)

* * *

Somewhere between the last spar and that incident with Magato, Naoto realized that maybe the book did not include all shapes of family. Because there was family, and then there were the Fuyumines.

She still remembered the expression on his face in the mirror, had nightmares with it engraved on the back of her eyelids.

That night, with Magato gone, she held onto the old man's coat, and failed to fall asleep. If he had been a firm believer of his own lessons, Fuyumine would have never shown a weakness. He would have never rescued her.

"He's not that easy to kill," she muttered to herself, and for the first time in a while, wondered if when the time would come, she would be able to dig the blade into his heart, with the full knowledge that his one weakness seemed to be the very same girl that was out to get him.

* * *

She cried next to his corpse for what seemed like ages. Cried, and cried, selfishly wanting him to be alive again so she could hurt him the same way he'd hurt her with his omissions and his silence. And then, when the tears were over, she buried him. Dragged his heavy body to the backyard of the warehouse, and dug the grave with a rusty shovel.

She did not cry when the hole was finished. Instead, she walked back into the building, and brought out the old tattered book, a wet cloth, and collected stones from the backyard. On her knees next to him, she cleaned his face of the blood, staring absent-mindedly at her own blood stained clothes and skin. The blood seeped through, all the way to her skin, when she pushed him inside his grave, and she climbed down with him to put two coins over his closed eyes. Then she used the same things she'd learnt under his care to climb back up to the real world, acrobatics done half-heartedly.

She was silent as she shoveled the dirt in and covered him up, silent and paying more attention to the way his blood had stuck to her. Silently, she undressed, dropping the black dress into the hole and covering it up.

She was not ashamed, not that day, because no-one would ever look. No-one would ever notice the girl burying the corpse. She picked up the book and kneeled beside the grave.

"Maybe I'll never know the names of my parents, or remember anything about the life before them… But I will find your name, so that I know at least something."

Silently, she made a mountain with the stones, and dug her finger into the soil, drawing out the word _father_, before she left him there.

* * *

There were nights when she dreamed of Magato with such clarity that it seemed like he was alive and real and next to her.

He taunted her still, and she found herself doing everything in her power not to fulfill his prophecy. She would not become the very thing that Fuyumine had shaped her to become; not because she hated the man, not anymore, not even close. But because she hated Magato enough to not want to prove him right in anything.

* * *

It was night when they met again, it was night and it was raining.

Naoto only had time to suck in a breath of surprise—or maybe not surprised at all, that he was still alive—before the swords were drawn.

He cornered her against a wall, and murmured appreciatively at how she'd filled up over the years, and she'd howled when he'd touched her again, howled and bled.

(Fuyumine had said: _Never show a weakness._ Naoto had discovered that if you showed a weakness intentionally, to the right person, you could get away with your life intact.)

He let her walk away, once the itch had been satisfied, once the blood on the pavement had been washed away, and Naoto had left silently, her legs trembling from soreness and hatred.

"I'll see you again, pet," he'd said, and Naoto had thought _Yes. And then nevermore._

* * *

After licking her own wounds that night, she had waited. She'd been patient and she had waited for him to come get her again, because his weakness was her struggle.

So he came. Pulled her into an alleyway and played her like a puppet on strings until she struggled and he breathed it in like a drug.

And there, in that alleyway, she pulled a knife out of her sleeve, and jammed it between his shoulder blades, her eyes cold like ice when he surged further up against her. She kicked him away, and pulled out his own sword.

Two slashes.

One X.

"You won't survive that one."

"You little bitch…you became exactly who he wanted you to."

"No. I'm just making an exception for you."

She cleaned the blade on his shirt, before deciding she would keep this one, too. The less there was left of Magato in this world, the better.

She stayed with him until he died, ignoring his taunts, ignoring his pleas, ignoring everything there was about him.

She did not dig him a grave. He was not part of her family. He was the one who'd destroyed it the second time.

* * *

The sword went to Bishop's weapon stash, left there to collect dust for all she cared.

The second day she went back to the warehouse, and buried the book inches away from the man's grave.

_I'll find my own way, from now on._

She wrote _Fuyumine_ on the ground again.

And left.


End file.
